


What A Difference A Day Makes

by goodboots



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bruce practices yoga, Clint nests in the rafters, Families of Choice, Gen, Groundhog Day, I accidentally a time loop AU, Natasha drinks vodka like water, Steve doesn't always hate the future, Team Building, Thor is emotionally intelligent, Tony Has Trust Issues, although a time loop doesn't leave you much of a choice, platonic OT6, so just go with it Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:31:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers pull a Groundhog Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What A Difference A Day Makes

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how this happened. Takes place in some vague handwavey time a couple months post-movie.

Later, Steve Rogers will look back on it all, through the painkiller haze and the smoke from the incense Bruce is burning, and murmur, "It feels like it all happened at once."  
  
And Natasha will give him a look halfway between pity and amusement, and say: "It  did  all happen at once, Steve. It's just been a very long day."  
  
"But," he'll insist weakly, "the flying monkeys."  
  
"Shut up, you're drugged. Try and get some rest."   
  
And he'll drift off to sleep in the infirmary bed, content to put the day behind him.  


*

But that's later. It's 6 AM the morning before, and Steve's in the gym.   
  
He likes the gym. They all know he likes the gym. By a large margin, it's the place he spends the most time at on the SHIELD campus. Stark jokes about it--"So the super serum created a violent streak, huh?" and Banner and Barton stifle their laughter badly, the first time they see him split a punching bag open.  
  
It's not aggression issues, or PTSD, or whatever else the counselor SHIELD has him talking to keeps suggesting.   
  
He likes the gym because it's quiet. He's the only one who ever goes in there in the mornings -- Natasha mostly trains in the evenings, some afternoons, and he figures that's an excuse to be out of the way when Stark has a meeting with Fury and has to pass through this building on the way to his office. Banner was doing yoga on the south lawns for awhile, but no one's seen him at it for a couple weeks, and Steve has no idea if Clint ever exercises or if he was just born the ability to shoot arrows behind his back and land a target from two hundred feet away. Either way, he doesn't use the gym.   
  
And, fine, maybe nobody else is coming in because he's already in there by sunrise most days. He could stand to be a little more social, the counselor tells him. He's not sure about that.  
  
At 6:32, the door swings open.   
  
"Hey, Star-Spangled Man," says Tony Stark. "We've got a situation."  
  
He turns around. Stark's slumped in the doorway, Romanov blinking over his shoulder.   
  
"Fury's called an emergency meeting. Something about a national security threat."  
  
There have been some bad days, since he woke up in the future. The Doombot false alarm a couple weeks ago wasn't much fun, and if he ever has to deal with HYDRA again it'll be too soon. What else? Loki's been causing trouble for a few months now, on and off, but they haven't actually seen him since the attack on Manhattan.  There have been training exercises and drills, but nothing requiring the Avengers to assemble.  
  
Mostly things have settled into a routine. He wakes up, goes to the gym ,eats breakfast, spends a few hours trying to catch up on seventy years of world history, talks to the SHIELD counselor about nothing in particular, has dinner, reads for a couple hours, and goes to sleep.   
  
That's the routine barring emergencies, of course, and there are a lot of emergencies when you're working for SHIELD. No routine is fool-proof, and some days are better than others.  
  
Wednesday, June 25th turns out to be the worst day he's had in awhile. 

*

"I almost lost an eye," Stark shrieks at Barton. "You missed the fucking monkey and almost hit me in the eye!"   
  
"I don't miss," Barton mutters under his breath, loud enough for Steve and Romanov both to hear.   
  
Steve's been listening the post-attack bickering since the facility-wide evacuation ended, all SHIELD employees free to return to their quarters and offices, the last of the monkey corpses cleared out. Coulson's come and gone ("They were genetically engineered falcon-simian hybrids, not actual monkeys," he said, but that didn't make the thousands of screaming monsters any less ridiculous to fight), and Banner's off somewhere de-Hulking.   
  
Steve's had enough. He smiles at the nurse, the smile he used to use on stage with the USO:   
  
"Hey, listen, is there any way we can have separate rooms?"  
  
He took a claw to the neck, and three of his ribs are broken, but otherwise he's fine. It'll all be healed by tomorrow anyway. There's a metric ton of painkiller pumping into his bloodstream, but that's not strong enough stuff to trick him into wanting to play team leader right now.   
  
Romanov manhandles Barton into the hallway, and when the nurse leaves she takes Stark with her, rolling his bed away while he mutters something mutinous.  
  
Steve has the room to himself. He lays back in his cot and presses the up-dosage button taped to the side of the cot, watches the ceiling until the painkillers knock him out. 

*

The next day, he wakes up and he's not in the infirmary.   
  
He's in his bed, quilt spread over his shoulders even though it's too hot to be sleeping under it, sheets tangled around his feet. There's sweat beading on his collarbone and under his arms.  
  
The sun's reaching over the edge of his open window, straining into the room, and the clock on the nightstand shows the time as just after 5AM.  
  
Steve stretches, and finds tension in his limbs but not pain.   
  
No; no, that's not right.   
  
He flings himself out of bed and takes in the room, sparsely furnished (he doesn't have much stuff, not even enough to fill up the small space SHIELD has gifted him in the residence buildings) but mostly tidy. There are a few things out of place, though, and he stares them down:   
  
Complete works of Jules Verne on the floor, beside the three-volume history of WWII Fury sent over last week that he hasn't cracked open yet. There's a SHIELD sweatshirt hanging off the back of the armchair in the corner, a set of weights by the window. One of those flat computers everybody around here uses is the only thing on his desk. The day they brought it in, he turned it on and watched the screen light up, moved the clicky thing around and stared at it for about ten minutes. He's sticking with the Verne for now.  
  
Nothing's out of place. Nothing's changed since he left the day before, and there's no mess.   
  
He can't figure out why they moved him back to his quarters, but h e shakes off the feeling of weirdness and goes to the gym, begins the day. 

*

The problem with routine, Steve decides, is that it hides inconsistencies. Whatever Stark says about him, Steve's not actually a machine, and he doesn't function like one. Sometimes he wakes up before sunrise, sometimes after. Sometimes he eats oatmeal for breakfast, sometimes toast or fruit or nothing, again, goes straight to the gym and pounds out his nightmares against the punching bag.   
  
The rest of SHIELD doesn't seem to have this luxury. They're a clockwork machine, everyone timed down to the second.  
  
The army had a lot of routines, sure, but those was necessary; they had to etch out time for a shave and a meal, a cigarette and bucket of cold water to scrub themselves clean, otherwise they weren't going to get one, and lots of times they didn't. The Howling Commandos adapted, made due, did without, and were constantly,  constantly changing.   
  
He never appreciates the concept of  change  so much until Stark appears at the gym doors and said "Hey, Star-Spangled Man," and Steve figures out it isn't a joke.

*

The second time he wakes up in his bed instead of the infirmary, he thinks _I've died and this is hell_ , which is ridiculous because he's never been religious, and this isn't a hell he would have imagined even in his wildest nightmares.

*

The third day, he's prepared. He gets out of bed quickly and goes to the gym, and on the walk he pays attention.  
  
He gets there and changes into his workout clothes, but doesn't go for the punching bags. He sets them up as usual, then stands in front of the window for twenty minutes, cataloging what he sees.  
  
Maria Hill is standing outside the admin building, performing her typical balancing act: takeaway cup of coffee in one hand and phone in the other, and a cigarette clenched between her teeth. Steve's a little sad they told him how terrible smoking is for the body; he could do with a cigarette right now.  
  
Maria twists her arm up to look at her watch and spills coffee all down her blouse. Steve bites back a laugh.   
  
He watches like that for another three minutes, then sets himself up in from of the bag, takes a couple quick jabs to make it look convincing.   
  
"Hey, Star-Spangled Man," says the voice behind him, right on time, "we've got a situation."  
  
He lies in the infirmary that night and decides that if this happens again tomorrow he's going to have a cigarette.

*

He tries to diverge from the pattern, tries to be subtle enough not to alert anyone outside (or inside) SHIELD that he's aware of what's happening to him, but it's no use. He keeps waking up and having to face the hordes, having to go through the same awful, lonely, exhausting day. 

*

It's 6:30AM, Wednesday June 25th, (number five). In two minutes Stark and Romanov are going to come collect him for the meeting with Fury that will start the whole disastrous day in motion, and he doesn't want to do it again.  
  
Steve doesn't move. He's not wearing his workout clothes, not even pretending to train. He's ready, waiting by the window, facing the door.  
  
"Hey, Star-Spangled Man, we've got a situation."  
  
Right on time.  
  
Steve says nothing, doesn't move. He want to see where this will go if he doesn't participate in the reenactment. Maybe it'll dissolve and he'll wake up.  
  
"Rogers, is your hearing aid working? I said, Mother Fury wants us ASAP."  
  
He tries to look tough, which is a bad habit left over from his weakling days. "I'm not going anywhere. Fury can come to me this time."  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about?"  
  
"You heard me. Whatever's controlling this, I want it to stop. I'm not playing this game again."  
  
He's not sure what happens next, except that Stark is suddenly across the room, jabbing a finger into his chest.  
  
"Tony," Romanov warns. What's she warning against? Steve has no idea. He's the one who's been trapped in a dream, he's the one with all the power here. He'll wake up and they'll be gone.  
  
"What game are we discussing, soldier? You could be a little more specific. Repeat yourself."  
  
"What?"  
  
Stark glowers at him, challenging. "I said _repeat_ yourself."  
  
Steve doesn't answer, but his expression must say something, because Stark moves closer, presses him against the window and looks two seconds away from trying to land a punch.  
  
"Clint," Romanov says out the side of her mouth, barely audible.  
  
The ceiling issues a rattling sound, and Steve looks up in time to see Hawkeye descend, in his full SHIELD uniform, a clutch of arrows slung over his back, bow gripped tight. It would be more impressive and less disturbing if the bow weren't aimed at Steve's head.  
  
"Were you in the air ducts?" Stark asks. Our the corner of his eye he sees Romanov take a knife from--well, who the hell knows where it comes from?--sees her draw it tight against Stark's throat, sliding into a choke-hold with the grace of a ballerina.  
  
Stark is unperturbed.  
  
"Was he in the air ducts?" he repeats, choking only slightly. "Because that is not normal."  
  
"He's my eye in the sky. He's usually in the vents."  
  
"It's probably best for society that you two broke up," he says, which even Steve knows is not a safe thing to say, and he's purposefully avoided hearing the details of their relationship.  
  
Romanov presses a little too close to Stark's throat with the knife--that really is an exceptionally sharp blade--but then Barton says "Tasha," warningly, and she loosens her grip enough for Stark to slip free.  
  
Barton's watching Steve the entire time this is happening, silent, like he doesn't quite know how to react. Then he replaces the arrow and lowers his bow, and says, after a glance at Romanov:  
  
"Is everybody else waking up and having every day be the same day we get attacked by the monkeys?"  
  
Silence in the gym.  
  
"Oh thank god," Stark says, and pulls him into a half-hug. "I thought I was going crazy. Pepper said I was going crazy."  
  
"She's not wrong," Barton mutters, and deftly extricates himself.  
  
Steve barely hears them over the pounding in his ears.  
  
"You're all reliving it too? The same dream?"  
  
The word dream has their ears perking up, and Steve feels his face flush.

*

"This isn't an episode, Captain," Banner assures him. (They've relocated to his lab, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves as they marched in tandem down the hallway and across the parking lot toward the research hub. Steve's not sure they pulled off subtlety very well). "I've done the tests five times now, and the data's always the same. The planet hasn't moved."  
  
"The whole world isn't going through this," Natasha objects. "We'd know by now."  
  
"Would we? We all thought we were the only ones until twenty minutes ago."  
  
"We'd know," says Stark, arms crossing over his chest, blocking the arc reactor's faint glow. "I must have told Pepper ten times."  
  
Steve considers that. "But it's only been five days."  
  
"Really? Ah. Okay, well I may have been drugged and incarcerated during a couple of those days. I was actually pretty relieved about the reset that time."  
  
Natasha's eyes light up. "It got you out of prison?" she says, with far too much interest.  
  
"Just the psych ward, but I don't see why it wouldn't work on your average jail cell. Why, need to do some inside work?  
  
"Can we focus on the relevant details, please," Steve barks. It's a little too sharp--he's been having trouble with tone ever since he reanimated, which isn't completely his fault. Everyone's so damn  casual in this decade. "I don't see how jokes--"  
  
"--No, no, this is good," Banner insists, hands waving. "We need to know the parameters we're dealing with. I personally have been waking up in my lab every morning--"  
  
"In the lab?" Stark says. "Even I sleep in a bed, Brucey boy."  
  
"--and finding every day to be Wednesday, June 25th."  
  
They agree collectively that this is the situation they're dealing with--that somehow, amazingly, they're reliving the same awful day, and for almost an hour no one is at each other's throat.   
  
It might be the most they've ever worked at a team. From then on, they stick together.

*

It's easier, once he knows he's not in it alone.   
  
He keeps trying to wake up before sunrise--he sure had enough practice during the war, waking up at any time of day and sleeping whenever there was a solid chance of rest--but it doesn't work. His eyes always slide open to the first shafts of sunlight cutting through the blinds.  
  
He hates those blinds, but all attempts to open or remove them are useless. They're always back up at the reset.  
  
After sunrise, he figures the day is in his own hands. He can roll over and go back to sleep if he wants too. He does, a few times. He hasn't slept in since the days when he was rooming with Bucky, and even then it was rare, there was too much to do for him to roll over and slide his arms under the cool edge of his pillow, let unconciousness drift back over him. One Wednesday he makes it to the other side of noon before he gets out of bed. Another he smokes a pack of cigarettes, which makes his voice gravelly and results in a massive lecture from Stark, of all people.

*

Banner keeps insisting that this is strangely reminiscent of some movie or other, but it's not until the fourth time he mentions it that Stark starts listening and says,  "Oh Jesus fucking Christ, you're right," and the two of them look really excited and start trying to recall the plot of it from memory, and yes, okay, Steve's officially lost.  
  
"It's _Groundhog Da_ y," Clint says, a terrified kind of joy spreading over his features. "God damn it."  
  
"That's in February," Steve corrects him.  
  
Banner snaps out a laugh.  
  
"It's a movie. Bill Murray gets stuck in this small town on Groundhog Day, and time keeps repeating."  
  
Steve wishes Thor were here. Then he'd at least have someone to shrug with.  
  
"I don't see how this is helping," Natasha offers.  
  
"No, I think they're actually on to something," Clint promises. "See, in the movie, the main guy keeps living the same day over and over, and nothing changes for him until he--gets out of the time loop or whatever it is he's stuck in."  
  
There's exactly one part of that he understood, and only because he read too many cheap pulp novels as a kid. Still, he wants to be sure, so he asks, "Is that what we're in? A time loop."  
  
The words fit strangely in his mouth, same as iPod and email and google, but there's an idea there that he can grab onto. Jules Verne, The Time Machine. He's not dreaming, he's re-living. They all are.  
  
He knows he's coming around to this too quickly, should be asking the hard questions and demanding rational answers--but, well, he's been frozen in a glacier for seventy years, and this is the fifth straight Wednesday he's spent in confinement with his superhero team.  
  
Time loop it is, then.

*

The next logical step, after telling each other that they're stuck in a never-ending Wednesday, is obviously to tell other people. Meaning SHIELD.  
  
"Dude, don't do it," Stark warns him. "I tried this already, it doesn't work."  
  
"It didn't work because it was you doing the explaining," Romanov suggests. She's following Steve to Fury's office, as back up. Banner and Clint both attempted this yesterday, post monkey-attack, and got skeptical looks and checked for head injuries. The Hulk didn't much like that, so he's not allowed being the voice of reason anymore  
  
"Fury trusts me, Tony," Steve insists. "He'll listen to me."  
  
Stark blows a raspberry at him and turns back down the hall.   
  
"Fine, get tased, I don't even care," he says, making a hands-off motion. "I warned you."

*

He shows up at Steve's door the next day, right at sunrise, with a peace offering in the form of a cup of coffee.  
  
"You warned me," Steve admits.    
  
None of the tranquilizers are in his system by that point, and there's no bruising where the guards had to sit on him to administer the shots, but his pride is definitely wounded.   
  
Going forward, they make a commitment to keeping SHIELD out of it, whatever it is. Most Wednesdays this falls apart by noon and they have to barricade themselves in whichever building seem most comfortable to avoid being hauled into the nearest psych ward; it's not a great system, but it works, at least until the monkeys show up at midday.

*

Steve's not the only one who tries to diverge. By the twentieth attack, Banner stops Hulking. He's the first one the monkeys take, and now they've got a better idea what the enemy's objectives are.  
  
Stark's not around. He's in China, currently, and he's got the quinjet with him so who knows where he'll be by the end of the day--by midnight. He makes it back at 11:43PM, runs full-speed into the infirmary, out of breath and livid.  
  
"Are you trying to get yourself killed? Because I remember you saying that doesn't work."  
  
Steve didn't end up injured this time, and he's almost enjoying the novelty of sitting in the uncomfortable visitor's chair. Almost. He's not enjoying the sight of a bruised and bloodied Bruce Banner propped on the bed across from him.  
  
He's unremorseful. "I thought I should test how the time recursion affects the radiation. I've never been just me when the reset occurs."  
  
"We're not testing it with suicide, you fucking asshole," Stark says. "Jesus Christ, what if it had worked?"  
  
"Don't answer that," interrupts Natasha. She looks nearly as rageful as Stark, though it's more contained, on her. "Don't say it. We already know what your answer is. You die, and get out of this hell of being angry all the time."  
  
Banner sighs. "Tasha--"  
  
"You will not do that again, Doctor," she says, hands shaking.  
  
That's the last Wednesday Stark takes off. The Quinjet sits idle in the hangar at the back of the compound, and nobody mentions the international dateline again, or the Bermuda Triangle, or any other crazy escape schemes. 

*

The thirtieth Wednesday, something changes.   
  
"Something's changed," Banner says, halting his stretches.   
  
"Nothing's changed," Clint counters.   
  
They've already staged the daily war on Coulson and barricaded themselves in the gym; it's kind of peaceful.  
  
Natasha lent him a book on nihilism (well, not really lent--it's back on the bookshelf in her spartan quarters every time the day resets, and he has to keep on asking her to bring it to the strategy sessions) and he's trying to read it, stretched out on the mats, but his eyes keep drifting away from the page.   
  
"What's changed?" asks Natasha seriously, looking up from where she's sharpening her favourite knife.  
  
Banner doesn't answer, but an expression crosses his face, an expression Steve's learned to recognize. It's the same look the Hulk has when he's worried.   
  
Barton slides down from his air duct and assumes a defensive pose beside Natasha; and Stark, up til now invested in the scorpion pose, also pauses, rights himself when the floor starts to shake.   
  
"That's new," he says, and then the window explodes and an Asgardian crashes into the room.  
  
Thor brushes the broken glass off his shoulders and starts laughing, a little maniacally, then pulls them each into a tight embrace before anyone has a chance to react.  
  
"My friends, I am glad to see you all," the God of Thunder says, looking like he's been put through the wringer. "I feared I was going mad."  
  
"Thor, buddy, where the fuck have you been?" says Clint from within the hug.  
  
"Trapped, on the Bifrost. But--it is very strange. I feel as if it has only been many weeks since I went away from here, yet Heimdall tells me it has been only a single day?"

*

"Shit just got real," Darcy says.   
  
They agreed as a team that the least they could do for Thor's return would be to let him reunite with loved ones, and it's not like New Mexico is prohibitively far to travel in the supersonic jet; still, Steve's a little surprised at how easily Jane Foster and her assistant take the news about the time-loop situation when they show up at their lab.  
  
"I don't know why we didn't try this before," Tony says. "They're clearly used to dealing with unbelievable crap." He waves a hand at the alien god king beside him, as evidence.  
  
"We're nerds," Jane agrees, "it's what we do."  
  
Thor and Jane have had their tearful reunion, made all the worse by the fact that she apparently won't remember it happening tomorrow, and now they're settling into the science of what-the-fuck-is-going-on?  
  
They hypothesize that the time loop is the result of an outside source acting on their reality, probably through "a combination of electromagnetic currents affecting their quantum makeup," which Steve doesn't really understand but Bruce and Tony nod along like it makes perfect sense, then start arguing with each other about  why  it makes sense. Clint gets involved trying to get a layman's terms explanation (Steve wouldn't mind hearing that either), and within ten minutes it's a full on shouting match.  
  
Thor watches the bickering from Jane's side, detached, and his expression grows strained.  
  
"QUIET," he eventually bellows.  On the other end of the lab, an empty glass beaker resonates, shatters, and everyone shuts up immediately. (Steve hasn't heard a shout like that since Bucky's Ma had to call him home for supper). "Can we not behave civilly while grappling with this turmoil? Your petty gripes are distracting."  
  
Tony rolls his eyes.  
  
"Look, I appreciate that you just want us all to get along, pal, but consider the situation: We're trapped in the worst day ever, Banner's getting even more suicidal, Captain America's becoming a fucking nihilist,  Barton hides in the ceiling, and Natasha keeps getting quietly drunk in the middle of the day just to put up with us. We're dealing with this the best way we can right now."  
  
Thor looks--not contrite, really, but subdued. A little sad.  
  
"I do not believe this arguing is productive, my friends. Surely we must stand together?"  
  
Tony, Bruce and Clint all hang their heads a little and mumble agreements.     
  
"Is that water?" Steve asks Natasha, eyeing her mug.   
  
She quirks an eyebrow at him and takes a long, apparently refreshing gulp. "Sure, Steve. Sure it is."

*

They do try to keep the team thing together, though, and play extra nice for Thor's sake. Eventually it becomes a bit of a habit not to jeer at each other, not to argue more than ten minutes before someone walks away. They're a relatively quiet group, and most of their time pre-monkey attack is spent in companionable silence, unless someone has something to say.   
  
The twelfth straight week of Wednesday,  July 25th starts with group therapy. They hole up in the gym, and Thor's the only one who bothers to talk.   
  
"I am worried about my brother," he says.  
  
Natasha snorts. "Your brother's the reason we're trapped in here."  
  
"Hey, play nice," Steve intervenes. "We don't know this is Loki. It could be Doom, or the Skrull, or--"  
  
"--Somebody's trying to kill us with magic flying monkeys? Yeah, no, I call Loki," she insists.  
  
Which is fine as a theory, but nobody can actually manage to find the little fucker anywhere. 

*

A couple days after that, Natasha gets herself stabbed in a knife fight.  
  
She'd avoided the attack on headquarters this time by virtue of being in New Jersey, trailing their only lead (Heimdall, claiming that was the last place he saw anything magical happen before the Wednesdays started piling up). It turned out to be a dead end, but she did find a nice bunch of bank robbers to foil.  
  
They gather round her bedside, and it's much the same as it was for Bruce--the same as it is for them every night, post-attack. They've stopped asking for separate rooms, and have made a habit of convening to discuss strategy for the next day, compare notes on what they did differently, what stayed the same.   
  
It's similar, and completely different, because for the first time Natasha isn't conscious.   
  
"And if this is the alteration the situation requires to cease repeating?" Thor asks. "What will we do then?"  
  
Steve looks up from reading her chart, because he wants to hear the answer to this. Tony's eyes flick to Bruce then back to the body in the bed.  
  
"It can't be," Clint finally says. "Tasha dying, if that's the thing that gets us booted out of this magic joke and back into the real world? That's not a world I want to live in."  
  
Steve should say something. He's supposed to be in charge, but there's no correction for him to make. Clint took the words right out of his mouth.  
  
They're still gathered round her bedside, listening to the increasing whine of the machines hooked into her with wires and tubes, the restless chime of emergency-in-progress, when the clock turns over. Then they're not.  
  
He wakes up in his bed and finally breathes out, because the room's the same, the sunrise is the same. He revels in the sameness for a long moment, then goes to find Natasha. 

*

Coulson's not in the time loop. They checked, more than once. The last time ended with Natasha consoling a silently sobbing Clint from his perch on a beam in the quinjet hangar, and Thor learning the Midgardian art of bartending, and this is all just too much information for Steve to take in at once.  
  
"They got together after the attack," she explains in an aside, when Clint has passed out from booze and misery and Thor is carrying him down to ground level.  
  
"Got--?"  
  
"Hooked up," she says, her lips twisting wryly. "Clint's been pining for awhile, and it took seeing him mauled by monkeys for Coulson to say something. Or--I guess you didn't know?"  
  
Steve didn't know. He's not going to pretend he's used to this--but, well, Bucky was like that, and he never thought anything of it. It's just one more thing to get caught up on, along with thai food and reality television and two Koreas, and he's getting tired of everybody assuming he's homophobic or bigoted just because he's from another time.  
  
"They had sex in the '40s, you know," he tells Natasha.  
  
Coulson and Clint make a lot of sense, now that he thinks about it.  
  
"They were together for six hours, and I think it's the happiest I've ever seen him, including the whole time we were a thing." She looks thoughtful: "Now it would be nice if we could just repeat whatever made Coulson man up and talk feelings."  
  
Steve thinks, _feelings_ , and calls an emergency meeting the next morning in the gym.

*

"It took all of us nearly a week to make contact with each other, to figure out we were in this together. That's a long time to live the same day. Why didn't we notice?"  
  
Natasha shrugs. "I only knew Clint was stuck because I saw he wasn't repeating everything exactly, but the rest of you were. We thought it was only us."  
  
"We didn't see much of each other that first day," Bruce agrees. "Might be there's something in that."  
  
Steve's mind is racing. "We didn't see any of each other that first day during the fight. I saw you--" he points to Tony and Natasha, both sitting on the windowsill and swinging their legs, "in the morning, and I saw Clint in the infirmary, and Bruce was busy being the Hulk--"  
  
"So you saw me but I didn't see you," Bruce agrees. The Hulk is great with voice recognition but his eyesight is alarmingly weak at a distance.  
  
"And Thor wasn't there--"  
  
"I regret that, my friend," Thor says. "I would have decimated enough of the creatures that this terrible repetition would never have started."  
  
Steve shuts his mouth.  
  
"Do you think that's how it works?" Tony wonders out loud.  
  
"That killing enough monkey-monsters will get us out of here?" says Clint. "Because, no, I don't."  
  
"No, you idiot, the time loop. Is it happening because we didn't work together that first Wednesday? 'Cause it kinda seems to me like it's designed to isolate us, keep us from interacting."  
  
All those wasted days they weren't talking, and the tentative weeks after that when no one was really focused on getting them out of this together. Steve realises he's only been thinking of how to get himself out of this, how to break free and then rescue the others from outside. That's not how this thing works at all, is it?  
  
"That's what this is," Steve exclaims, maybe a little too excited but come on, answers are happening! "They're trying to break our morale! This is great!"  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about?" says Clint.  
  
"Whoever's doing this--"  
  
"Loki," Natasha coughs.  
  
"-- _Whoever's_ doing this, they want us to suffer individually, and not work together."  
  
Bruce has his chin in his hands, leaning forward on the mats. "This is like that episode of _Buffy_ \--"  
  
"Oh, my god, stop comparing this to television," Natasha says, completely monotone, and follows it up with a swig from her not-a-water-bottle.  
  
His affronted look is swallowed by the grin he shines her way.  
  
Clint raises his hand. He's on the ground, today: they've instituted a _No Hiding In The Ceiling During Avenger's Meetings_ rule. "I like this theory, but I have one problem with it. We've been working together for weeks now, like a real team, and it's still fucking Wednesday."  
  
But Steve's way past that. "We've been working like a team in here," he gestures round the gym, the space that used to belong to just him, that they've so recently made their own. "We just need to be one out there, too."

*

Wednesday, June 25th number one hundred and seven, they're ready.  
  
This time they don't wait for the mutant monkeys to show up. They meet in the hallway outside Steve's room at sunrise and put the pre-approved plan (three Wednesdays of solid strategy) into action. By the time the attack gets underway, they've been in position for three hours, waiting. Clint's got Thor's back, Thor's got Natasha's, Natasha has Bruce covered and Bruce is keeping an eye on Tony in the sky, who is circling for aerial views of the fight and running a live commentary to Steve through the Iron Man suit.  
  
This fight is different. It's--lighter, somehow. Simpler. There's still a lot of carnage, lots of spewed monster guts, but no civilian casualties this time, no major injuries. They've talked too long about their individual experiences, studied this event from all angles.  
  
When the last flying monkey is dead they take stock of the situation, regroup in the central courtyard. It's just after 9PM, the earliest the attack has ever ended, and the evacuation order should still be in effect, no one who isn't an Avenger allowed on SHIELD premises.  
  
So it's a surprise when the eastern wall explodes and Fury strides through it, like that's nothing unusual, like he regularly blows dynamite-holes in brick walls before he enters a conversation. Maybe he does.  
  
"We're rescuing you from a time-loop," he says. Coulson and Hill are trailing behind him, climbing over the debris of a controlled explosion and the monster-monkey corpses. He's addressing Steve but really that message is for all of them.  
  
"Fuck that, we rescued ourselves," someone says loudly in response to that.  
  
It takes Steve ten seconds and the expression on Coulson's face to figure out that he was the one who said it.  
  
"You heard him," says Tony, clapping him on the shoulder, effusively proud. " _Fuck that_ , Agent."

*

It wasn't a punishment, from God or Fury, it wasn't the universe imploding. It was Loki, and some mad plan to break their team spirit before it had a chance to develop.  
  
"I told you it was Loki," Tasha reminds them.  
  
"You told us it was Loki," Tony parrots. "Hawkeye, give the lady her prize."  
  
Clint chucks a chocolate bar at her from across the room. They're in the infirmary, waiting until she gets the minor gash on her leg sewn up. Steve, as usual, got a nice talon to the neck (can't win 'em all), and he's got the familiar painkiller cocktail leaking into his veins.  
  
"Hershey's?" she frowns, slides it over the bedspread, away from her.  
  
"Yeah, the last Hershey's," he says. "They actually ran out. They'll have to put something else in there now. Maybe M&M's."  
  
They marvel in the awe that elicits for a still moment. _Change_. Thor picks the Hershey bar up, takes a thoughtful bite.  
  
"I don't know," Banner says, "we've got four minutes to midnight. There's still time for a reset, if we want one."

*

It's Thursday, June 26th. Steve's awake in the infirmary bed, the painkillers metabolizing in his bloodstream as his body repairs itself.   
  
It's Thursday, and they others have all retreated to their own homes and quarters to recuperate. Clint left with Coulson around 2AM, followed shortly by Tony, dragged out by Pepper. They're taking the day off, and tomorrow morning the six of them are meeting in the gym, to train together. The whole team.   
  
His team.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god you guys, I have an actual probably-doomed novel to finish, somebody take the internet away from me.
> 
> And, you know, (as always) thanks for reading!


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